2011 SCTE Show

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Cable network architectures are in for some big changes. With more video being delivered over IP, we’re beyond just debating the merits of an integrated CMTS versus a modular CMTS. We’re leapfrogging to the next big architectural dilemma of how to converge video processing at the network edge where it meets up with with access network technology.

Last week, Motorola GM Joe Cozzolino introduced the concept of a Video Edge Services Platform in a round of briefings with industry reporters. I’ll talk more about the VESP in the coming months, but for now I thought I’d include a few excerpts from articles out of Light Reading Cable, Multichannel News, and CED Magazine. Here is how Jeff Baumgartner, Todd Spangler, and Traci Patterson reported on the Video Edge Service Platform.

Motorola is already working on a next-gen device called the Video Edge Services Platform (VESP) that would succeed the company’s current CMTS product line, according to Joe Cozzolino…

Moto’s designing the VESP to incorporate features that are already fairly well aligned with Comcast’s vision for the CMAP — namely higher density on the Docsis MAC and edge QAM side, combined with Ethernet routing. Moto’s VESP also aims to support a mix of traditional MPEG and IP-based video traffic, and access to subscriber management systems and the overarching “control plane” — all in one super-chassis.

The new system will provide much higher-density QAM channels and a much more scalable backplane for high-bandwidth video traffic, and Motorola is positioning it as the platform for cable’s future IPTV services. It will be in the “sweet spot” of what Comcast is calling the “converged multiservice access platform,” or CMAP, according to Cozzolino…

At the same time, Cozzolino added, operators will be able to use their existing CMTS and edge QAM infrastructure.

Motorola plans on leveraging the broad range of technologies in that seeming hodgepodge of operating units, pulling together its native expertise in video processing, routing and access technology to create what could be the most powerful new platform that cable has seen in a while…